My library situation and how I am reading and keeping books

I broke down. I gave in to the Apple mothership and purchased an iPad a year ago.

My main reasons for choosing the iPad

• It’s in colour. I read a lot of comic books/manga and it isn’t the same without colour
• It’s at least 10″ which is the size I need for said comic books/manga
• It’s a comfortable reading size (the 5″ ones look far too small for me)
• It has an option to connect to wi-fi (I didn’t pay for the plan)
• I can use apps on it if I wanted, and I can watch videos on it (which I do, often)
• It is a screen, which means it has light to read the words rather than needing a light
• The price was decent compared to other 10″ readers that were in the range of $1000+ without functionality
• I have PDFs and they don’t look good on smaller readers (a lot of zooming in/out required)

My main reasons for not loving the iPad

• Have you felt how heavy this #$(@ thing is? HEAVY. Not a one-handed device, I can tell you
• It’s from Apple which means it’s blocked off from a lot of things which is good and bad
• It’s a screen and not e-ink technology which means I need to take a break occasionally

Anyhoo, I bought it and that’s all there is to it. Can’t change it now. 🙂

THE CHOICE BETWEEN PHYSICAL AND DIGITAL BOOKS

Ultimately, it’s the space and weight problem for me. If I had a home and a room just for books to keep in my library, I’d keep every book I ever owned and buy secondhand books rather than new ones.

However, because I live in an apartment or hotel most of the time and I don’t own a home nor do I want to carry around 10 boxes of books each time we move, I needed a more practical solution to be able to have my books with me.

I simply don’t have the space.

I can hold thousands of books on the iPad, and that’s worth its weight for the amount of books it can hold.

Even so. I miss the smell of books, the pages, and the binding. There’s something satisfying about opening a new book to read, but it’s a small price to pay for everything else I am getting.

THE CHOICE BETWEEN LIBRARIES AND DIGITAL BOOKS

The other option was for me to go to the library and read, which I liked.

The problem is I travel/move a lot. By the time I get a library card for the area, I could be out by the next month and have to go get ANOTHER library card elsewhere.

It becomes a hassle when I travel so much.

The other problem is I don’t like waiting for other books to become available (again, the traveling problem crops up), and sometimes the books I want to read are not available because they’re foreign or too new to be in the library yet.

I BUY BOOKS VIA KOBO OR READ THEM AS PDFS

I don’t buy books via iBooks or whatever Apple’s program for books is, because I don’t really like it.

I buy Kobo ebooks which are generally cheaper than the physical version which is to be expected. I won’t pay $19.99 for a book that is in a digital format, but under $10 is a good price point for me, around $7 – $8 per book, which I find reasonable.

The Kobo application isn’t bad to use, although I find it a bit slow on my iPod Touch when I have books on the go.

So far, I like using it.

Except for the size and weight of it (holding it takes a lot out of you), I’ve gone through about 11 books in the past 2 weeks, reading voraciously.

I walk up the stairs, bump into walls, all holding the iPad and reading as much as I can.

The main application I use is this PDF Expert application by Readdle I bought for $10.

Yes, it is pricey for a PDF application but it seemed to do everything I wanted and it has FOLDERS.

FOLDERS!!! 🙂 Perfect. I love it because it is simple, and easy to use. I am willing to pay for that if it makes my life easier.

I just named each folder by the author’s name, and I put the books in each.

MY PHYSICAL BOOK COLLECTION

I’ve only kept:

• cookbooks (although I’d love them in PDF form too)
• books on photography with huge, beautiful full colour pages
• rare books not available as ebooks

Now instead of 10 boxes, I only have half a box of books I can’t do without. 🙂